Let’s come to the burgers later. For now, indulge me and think of tall chinars, taller deodars, and serene hills against a vast expanse of evening sky as far as the eye could see — this is no postcard. This was us in Srinagar. After a long day of work at the University of Kashmir, we should have just put our feet up and gazed at this sight, sipping hot glasses of kahwa . Instead, we greedily jumped at my colleague’s invitation to try out the local street food. “Come let me introduce you to nadru monji ,” he said. His half-Kashmiri tongue rolled out the words with ease. Nadru monjee . Nadur moinji!Naadroo maanji!Nudr monje , we chanted, like silly school-goers on a class vacation, as we walked through the beautiful lawns of the university that was hosting us.
Here we were, in ‘Paradise on Earth’, at a market that seemed like a Snack-lover’s paradise in Srinagar. Forget diets; forget good fat and bad fat, just looking at those piles of fried snacks would probably make our cholesterol levels shoot northwards. But the shop-keepers looked at us with such hope and our colleague waxed such eloquence about the nadru monji that we decided to have it. “This is made of lotus stems,” we were told, as we bit into the batter-coated, spicy bajjis , or fritters. Next to the pile of lotus-stem fritters was a big plate of huge circular snacks. They looked like giant versions of what we called sojjiappams at home. “Here, take a piece of this and eat it with this halwa ,” said the indulgent shopkeeper. Mmm lovely, I said rolling my eyes heavenwards. And that’s when I spotted many eyes watching me… fish eyes! There was a whole big mound of fish fritters, sitting in very close proximity to the nadru monji I’d just eaten. This was quite a traumatic and queasy moment for a vegetarian me, but I quickly managed to walk to the next shop, a vegetable shop.
My Kashmiri colleague had told us about haak , a kind of local spinach, and he tried to spot it for us in the vegetable shop. I spotted dry Kashmiri chillies and wanted to buy one or two chillies to see if I could use the seeds to propagate them back home. “How much?” I asked, showing up a single chilli. The shopkeeper ignored me to serve his other patrons. My friends had moved on. I didn’t want to be lost in the market, but I didn’t want to let go of the chilli either. So, I must confess, I just walked away with a single dried chilli. The fish heads from the next shop seemed to look accusingly at my theft, and I hurried to where my friends were now standing and planning the next day’s outing — an early morning trip to the incredible bakeries of Srinagar.
The stolen dry chilli passed through the stringent security check at Srinagar airport, landed safely in Bengaluru, got buried in my terrace garden, and soon I had a good crop of Kashmiri chillies. At work, I was editing a children’s book by Nayan Chanda, the founder of Yale Global magazine, and an expert on globalisation. In Around the World with a Chilli , he writes about Ajar Uchu, the spirit of the chilli pepper according to Incan mythology. He tells readers how traders, warriors, kings and queens, wars and journeys caused the movement of the chilli and other spices across the world. He writes about the Europeans’ search for kali mirch that led them to hari mirch . So chillies were on my mind when I had seen the dried Kashmiri chillies. And, therefore, instead of being ashamed of my robbery, I felt rather pleased at the way my chilli had travelled from Kashmir to Karnataka. I had also bought (not robbed, please note) rajma or red kidney beans, which Kashmir is known for. I made my version of the global burger to take in my lunchbox recently.
Ingredients: 2 cups red kidney beans or rajma from Kashmir (instead of Mexican black beans that are usually used in burgers. Kashmir rajma cooks faster than regular rajma ): soaked overnight, pressured-cooked and mashed.
2 tablespoons flax seeds, dry-ground in a mixer (powdered flax seeds made into a paste with water is a good substitute for eggs, and a super binding agent)
2 cups of grated carrots, onions, bottle gourd or any other vegetable of your choice (I used a couple of fresh ridge gourds too)
1 cup of shredded greens (so what if I did not get to eat haak in Srinagar, my garden had a healthy crop of palak , gongura and manathakkali keerai or what is called kashi soppu in Kannada that wanted to be part of the culinary experiment. Oh, notice how kashi has become part of this global burger?)
Grated ginger, salt, and chilli powder as per your adventurism (of course, I used two finely chopped bright red Kashmiri chillies)
Method: Mash everything together, shape into patties, coat with bread crumbs, and put them on a hot tawa . Drizzle a bit of olive oil (traditionally from the Mediterranean basin, now made in India too, of course), or butter, or any other oil. Turn the patties over, till both sides are crisp. Insert between slices of bun and enjoy the global veggie burger with a sauce of your choice, or a tangy green tomato salsa.
Mala Kumar is an editor at Pratham Books and a freelance writer.
